June 02, 2004

Turnabout Is Fair Play

Ogged links to this depressing NYT magazine article about the culture of "hooking up" among teens. Ogged seems to think it's depressing for more or less the reason commenter baa brings up: "kids are getting an anomie-laden introduction to sex". I don't think that's the problem. For teenage boys, I think lots of commitment-free oral sex has got to be the single greatest leap forward in male-female teen interaction history. Why? Because teenage boys are both incredibly horny and socially incompetent. The problem is this:

While many girls insist they receive sexual attention during hookups, just as many boys say hookups are mostly about pleasing the guy. Michael Milburn, professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and co-author of the book ''Sexual Intelligence,'' an examination of sexual beliefs and behaviors in America, says that the boys' take is more accurate. ''Most of the time, it's the younger girl performing fellatio on the older boy, with the boy doing very little to pleasure the girl,'' Milburn says. Some girls told me that guys think it's ''nasty'' to perform oral sex on a girl. So a lot of girls will just perform oral sex on the guy ''and not expect anything in return, because she'll know that he probably thinks it's gross,'' Irene told me. But her friend Andi pointed out that many girls are themselves insecure about receiving oral sex; they'd rather just have intercourse.

Look, if a guy thinks it would be "nasty" to go down on you, then he shouldn't be getting any oral sex from you, at all, ever. If you're not comfortable with a guy going down on you, then you don't want to have an orgasm, and thus you don't want to have sex. Period. End. Of. Story. If letting some guy just show up at your house so you can suck his dick is empowering, then I'm Henry Kissinger.

Comments

That was particularly depressing.

But it seems like part of the larger problem: they don't understand what sex is for, or about. They have a lot of trouble acknowledging that sex is *personal*. So a girl can suck dick (in these cases, that's really all they're doing) and think it's empowering in the same way smoking (which is rebellious) or skinny dipping (which puts boys under your spell) is empowering.

What makes me sad is that kids would deny the personal, and, if they keep at it long enough, lose easy access to it.

Is this new? I mean, I'm an elderly 25, and it was going on when I was in high school. I thought it was just...I don't know, the way things were in a certain segment of teen populations. One girl I knew said that if she really liked a guy, she swallowed, otherwise she spit. I asked, "If you don't really like him, what on earth are his genitals doing in your mouth?" This question had not occurred to her.

Regarding the important issue raised in the base post (under such a regime, my own memories of teenage sex would lose certainly half their sweetness), I propose the following public service ad compaign:

You're spot on, Belle, that no-strings-nookie should be the adolescent boy equivalent to the discovery of the atom bomb: an epoch-making, world-historical event. I suspect, for this reason, that it's not really true. Joe Loser can't procure a blow job via IM. Rather, a small group of sexually active male winners is just doing much "better", where better means increased access to impersonal, non-reciprocal sex. The Times article suggests this, with many quotes from males winners, but no sense of the great (male) rejoicing that should attend broader sexual access.

Also, do we feel certain that the lack of *sexual* reciprocity represents anything so novel in teen relations? Guys getting off lots more than girls, is this really so novel? What does appear new, however, is the lack of any reciprocity at all (guy gets off, girl goes home), and the absence of personal involvement. That's wicked anomie-laden right there.

Yeah, it's the guy's fault if some girl is nice enough to blow him for free. Right.

The only problem I see here is that nobody asked those teens if they see relationships in general as a bad thing. There's one girl saying that relationships hurt and that's stupid, but, well, she's _15_. What did you expect?

"But! But! But!..." you say, "those teenagers are having promisciuos sex!" Well, so what? No, seriously, so what? Is sex harmfull? They're using condoms, which is a _very_ positive sign here. They use condoms as if it was obvious they need to. Well, call me whatever, but I think this is great news. 15-year-olds know they need to use a condom if they're gonna have sex! Yay!

"But they're hurting themselves mentally, they just don't know that yet" you say. Well, I call bullshit on this old and proven rule. How could they be hurting themselves if they don't think it's that much of a deal? If everyone's doing it, they're not going to feel bad, just as I don't feel bad watching porn. I never will. It's harmless.

"But they're not gonna know how and why to build real, happy relationships, so the whole civilisation will crumble into dust!" Yeah, like the grown-ups know how to do that that. Like their parents are just wonderfull together, helping each other and talking all the time, and laughing... Oh, hold on, perhaps there's a chance not only that their parents' unhappy relationships don't teach them what's good about relationships -- perhaps they've found a better way than we did?

I'd rather if my daughter had safe sex with boys her age, than if she was to use hard drugs (heroin, speed, alcohol) or drive recklessly. I'd rather she didn't marry the first poor soul that humped her, 'cause I know that good sex is very important in relationships. Feelings, talking, and blah blah blah, but good sex brings people together, period.

I am against anything that allows asshole teenage boys to be bigger assholes, especially to vulnerable young women. I say if they want their dick sucked, they can damn well find another man to do it, then return the favor -- or else if that's not an option, get used to the smell and become familiar with the unique pleasure of reciprocity and respect.

lamdog, The answer to erotophobia is not to suspend all moral judgment with regard to sex.

Y'know, every now and then, I think I almost understand why conservatives keep thinking the world is going to hell in a handbasket.

First, dammit, why couldn't I have been a teenager after the invention of SMS? If only somebody had told me that I could have ample oral sex with no risk of commitment, I'd have been glad to go down on women. But no. I had to be a teenager after HIV but before cellphones. No wonder my generation is so friggin' cynical. To late for free love, to early for random head.

Second, I remember reading something a few years ago about how people are increasingly using dating services, not to get sex but to shop for a mate. And not just hopeless losers and ugly people either - I mean young, hot people. Worse still, it seems that arranged marriages are making a come-back among westernised, well-educated professionals in the Asian immigrant community. It seems spending your youth in medical school and working your way up the corporate ladder doesn't leave so much time for finding Mr Right and - surprise, surprise - your parents are actually likely to pick the child of a family much like yours, with a similar background, aspirations and expectations. The message is one of people abandonning the whole idea of dating and just going back to openly shopping for economically and socially compatible people.

This leaves a rather odd vision of a world where promiscuity and Victorian marriage practices are both the norm, and where I can't quite figure out if this is or isn't a good thing.

(This from the man who met his wife the old fashioned way - in an Internet chat room.)

I'm not sure the sexual culture of the not-so-educated classes (or, actually, I'd say the not-so-intellectually-active classes, in which I have to include some pretty highly-payed suburban-living professionals as well) is really about mutually satisfying sexual relationships where all parties involved view sex as an organic part of the relationship. It's more about showing that you can conform to norms set by some idea you have of who your peers are. With ideas of what sex should look like gotten from, oh, I don't know, bad porn movies (where fellatio is frequent and prolonged, cunnilingus nearly non-existent and even if it's there it's pretty unpleasant-looking, and intercourse is treated as a machinelike affair with the ultimate aim of producing as big a male ejaculation as possible.) This isn't just teen culture. This is their parents' culture as well.

I have to say, at the ripe old age of 21, that I was part of that culture in a way when I was 15, and no, it's not healthy for the girls. It's not healthy for the guys, either.

Really. Any culture where a woman's worth is in how many guys she can get sexually attracted to her and get off leads to some fucked up body image issues (I have to stay thin/ look a certain way to be sexy) and really ugly ideas of what men are and what they are like.

Brains and accomplishments are frowned upon. Having any needs, demands, etc is frowned upon.

I'm sure some guys think that having a lot of 15 year old girls with eating disorders who exercise compulsively who are willing to go down on almost anyone who's nice to them is great. These people, who just want to get off in a woman's body and don't give a damn about what's going on with her, as commonly known as assholes.

After one of my best friends killed herself, I woke up and got the hell out of that sort of environment.

It leads to bitter, fucked up, miserably unhappy people who are convinced that the only thing they have to offer the world is a hole to come in.

This is, in no way, a good thing. Unless you're an asshole and don't care that right after you zip up and leave the girl who just went down on you might literally slit her wrists.

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